Study with Fortune 500 Companies on Diversity

In 2006, the Conference Board of Canada released a stinging report on diversity. In Diversity: Priorities, Practices and Performance in Canadian Organizations, Prem Benimadhu, vice president, governance and human resource management at the board said, “there is a disconnect between rhetoric and reality.”
42 per cent of their firms do not have a strategy for diversity, fewer than half provide any training for diversity to managers and employees, and 88 per cent rated their organization average or below average in preparing leaders to manage a diverse workforce.
In 2004, for its annual list of Top 50 US companies of diversity, the magazine Diversity Inc surveyed 317 Fortune 500 Companies about their inclusion practices for its annual list of the Top 50 Companies for diversity in the US and found:

• 90 per cent of the Top 50 CEOs personally review diversity programs and results
• 90 per cent of the Top 50 CEOs require all managers to take diversity training
• 100 per cent of the Top 50 companies track the recruitment and retention of minority groups
• The workforce for the Top 50 comprises of 32 per cent people of colour, compared with 17 per cent for the national workforce.

Another Diversity Inc. report, called Diversity Best Practices, details practices culled from their annual survey of CEOs found:

• 89 per cent of CEOs require top management to be accountable for diversity programs
• 90 per cent of CEOs regard diversity as a competitive advantage in improving employee retention
• 85 per cent of CEOs believe diversity programs are helping them become "employers of choice"
• 80 per cent of CEOs correlate diversity goals with larger corporate goals.

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